Normative Ethics

Few would deny that Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees was an effective satire. In it, Mandeville confronted his readers with the unpleasant fact that a flourishing commercial society depended on the m...

Neo-Aristotelian forms of character education often draw on literary sources as materials, although rarely poetry. This article offers retrospective reflections on a poetry-based character-education intervention, conducted in an Icelandic secondary-school setting. Having run into practical difficulties during the implementation phase, the challenges of implementation were reflected upon through consultation with ten subject experts who shared their views about the enablers and barriers encountered when running such an intervention. The interviews yielded a rich data set, which often took interviewees beyond the (...) boundaries of a poetry-based curricular context to focus on more general conditions for effective, character-inspiring school-work. Through thematic analysis, four themes were identified: freedom, time, creativity, and wonderment. Of these four, creativity had been identified in advance as an interview theme, meaning that the researchers expected to find it. The remaining three provide an insight into how, according to the interviewees, the ideal Icelandic school system should be designed. The theme of freedom addresses both negative and positive aspects of the current state of affairs, while the theme of time mostly reflects negative aspects of the Icelandic curriculum. The theme of wonderment has solely positive connotations in the minds of interviewees, and is the core of this analysis because it seems to hold the key to the question: what factors would enable an effective intervention of the sort under scrutiny here? This theme is analysed in detail, and some specific and general educational implications are elicited. (shrink)

Neo-Aristotelian forms of character education often draw on literary sources as materials, although rarely poetry. This article offers retrospective reflections on a poetry-based character-education intervention, conducted in an Icelandic secondary-school setting. Having run into practical difficulties during the implementation phase, the challenges of implementation were reflected upon through consultation with ten subject experts who shared their views about the enablers and barriers encountered when running such an intervention. The interviews yielded a rich data set, which often took interviewees beyond the (...) boundaries of a poetry-based curricular context to focus on more general conditions for effective, character-inspiring school-work. Through thematic analysis, four themes were identified: freedom, time, creativity, and wonderment. Of these four, creativity had been identified in advance as an interview theme, meaning that the researchers expected to find it. The remaining three provide an insight into how, according to the interviewees, the ideal Icelandic school system should be designed. The theme of freedom addresses both negative and positive aspects of the current state of affairs, while the theme of time mostly reflects negative aspects of the Icelandic curriculum. The theme of wonderment has solely positive connotations in the minds of interviewees, and is the core of this analysis because it seems to hold the key to the question: what factors would enable an effective intervention of the sort under scrutiny here? This theme is analysed in detail, and some specific and general educational implications are elicited. (shrink)

Is radical skepticism ethically problematic? This paper argues that it is. Radical skepticism’s strong regulation of our doxastic economy results in us having to forego doxastic commitments that we owe to others. Whatever skepticism’s epistemic defects, it is ethically defective. In turn, I defend Moralism, the view that the kind of extreme doubt characteristic of radical skepticism is a serious moral and eudaimonic weakness of radical skeptical epistemology. Whether this means that skepticism is false or incorrect, however, is a further (...) claim that Moralists may or may not accept. I distinguish between an encroachment and abrogation version of the view, and show how each one bears on radical skepticism. In either case, Moralism makes our beliefs less vulnerable to radical revision. The paper concludes with some exploratory reflections on whether the argument can be extended to show that radical skepticism is politically problematic, even risking injustice. (shrink)

Deepfakes are extremely realistic audio/video media. They are produced via a complex machine-learning process, one that centrally involves training an algorithm on thousands of audio/video recordings of an object or person, S, with the aim of either creating entirely new audio/video media of S or else altering existing audio/video media of S. Deepfakes are widely predicted to have deleterious consequences (principally, moral and epistemic ones) for both individuals and various of our social practices and institutions. In this introduction to the (...) Topical Collection, I first survey existing philosophical research on deepfakes (sections 2 and 3). I then give an overview of the papers that comprise the Collection (section 4). Finally, I conclude with remarks on a line of argument made in a number of papers in the Topical Collection: that deepfakes may cause their own demise (section 5). (shrink)

One branch of the responsible innovation literature involves the direction of innovation: if the public or decision-makers can or should direct innovation, how should innovation be directed? This paper explicates a case study where directionality – the plurality of plausible values for innovation – is directly implicated. In this case, a key technology may require a strategy for innovation, but there are contrasting normative reasons to drive that innovation in different ways, reflecting two distinct moral values, ‘effectiveness’ and responsiveness to (...) ‘need’. In this case, carbon dioxide removal, these values may well conflict. Strategically deploying carbon dioxide removal in a cost-effective manner would tend to support siting it in regions where there are significant oil and gas operations. In contrast, strategically deploying carbon dioxide removal in response to need would tend to support siting it in regions where expected demand for the technology is required for development. [Open access]. (shrink)

The proliferation of violations within industry sectors (e.g., banking, doping in sport, abuse in religious organizations) highlights how trust violations can thrive in particular sectors. However, scant research examines how macro institutional factors influence micro level trustworthy conduct. To shed light on how sectoral features may influence trust violations in organizations, we adopt a multilevel perspective to investigate the perceived causes of trust violations within the not-for-profit (NFP) sector, a sector that has witnessed a number of high-profile trust breaches. Drawing (...) on interviews with board members and senior executives of NFPs with cross-sectoral experience, we analyze the causes of trust violations to inductively develop a conceptual model of the multilevel factors contributing to trust violations in NFPs. Our model highlights how trust violations have their roots in sectoral-level factors, which trickle-down to influence the ethical infrastructure at the organizational-level, and in turn individual-level factors and violations. We identify how three NFP sectoral features influence trustworthy behavior: corporatization, resource scarcity, and assumed moral integrity. Our findings speak to the importance of looking beyond the organization to understand both the causes and prevention of trust violations and developing the concept of sector-level ethical infrastructure. (shrink)

Integrity is often conceived as a moral virtue that pertains to the coherence between one’s moral convictions and actions, as well as consistency in convictions over time. By contrast, I argue that integrity is primarily an epistemic virtue. To act with integrity, an individual or organisation must engage in responsible inquiry; that is, the collection, processing, sharing, and storage of information in ways that promote truth. Organisational structures such as division of labour and hierarchy present challenges to responsible inquiry, thereby (...) making epistemic integrity in organisations inherently vulnerable and increasing the risk of unintentional unethical behaviour. This epistemic perspective on organisational integrity emphasises the importance of developing virtuous epistemic infrastructure and an ethical epistemic culture. By aligning their beliefs with facts, organisations can also improve moral behaviour and reduce the risk of culpable ignorance. (shrink)

This ground-breaking Research Handbook showcases the value, uniqueness, versatility, and holistic character of organisational integrity. Bringing together diverse perspectives from a wide range of expert contributors, it not only provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of the field, but also charts exciting new directions for future research.

Several important questions in applied ethics – like whether to switch to a plant-based diet, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or vote in elections – seem to share the following structure: if enough people ‘cooperate’ and become vegan for example, we bring about a better outcome; but what you do as an individual seems to make no difference whatsoever. Such collective action problems are often thought to pose a serious challenge to consequentialism. In response, I defend the Reactive Attitude Approach: rather (...) than focus only on the deontic status of (non-)cooperative acts – as existing consequentialist responses mostly do – consequentialists should also focus on when to praise or blame individuals. For example, even if your veganism does not change the overall outcome, consequentialists might still recommend praising you for your cooperative behavior. I make a consequentialist case for including praise and blame in our ethical practices around collective action and argue that doing so helps us capture important intuitions. I develop and defend these arguments by drawing on recent instrumentalist theories of blame and responsibility. (shrink)

This chapter consists of two main sections; the first comprises the epistemological analysis regarding the source of knowledge used in clinics, knowledge representation and management, inference capacity and decision-making, and the second section discusses the ethical problems caused by the epistemological differences between CDSS-integrated clinics, and conventional clinics, and normative concepts such as moral responsibility, attribution of responsibility and distribution of responsibility are briefly examined. It has been argued that to understand and evaluate the ethical problems that arise in CDSS-integrated (...) clinics, it is necessary to understand and clearly reveal the epistemological features and differences between the two types of clinical services. (shrink)

Yapay zekâ, 1950’lerden itibaren gelişen bir disiplin olmasına rağmen özellikle son yıllarda daha çok gündemimizde yer almaya başlamıştır. Bugün akıllı asistanlar, yüz tanıma sistemleri, çeviri programları, bilgisayar oyunları, robotik sistemler gibi teknolojilerle yapay zekâ, günlük hayatlarımıza dâhil olmuş durumdadır. Bu teknolojiler yaşamlarımızı, yaşamı algılayış biçimlerimizi ve dolayısıyla bizleri radikal bir şekilde dönüştürmektedir. Bu baş döndürücü dönüşüm ise dikkatli bir incelemeyi gerektirmektedir. Ne var ki yapay zekâ teknolojilerinin geleceğine yönelik ahlaki çıkarımlarda bulunmanın, spekülasyona oldukça açık bir alan olduğu için bizi hataya (...) sürükleyebileceğini dürüstçe kabul etmemiz gerekir. Ancak, geçmişteki gibi felaketlerin yaşanmaması için ahlaki bir farkındalık içinde olmamız da elzem görünmektedir. Kaldı ki günümüzde var olan yapay zekâ sistemleri de ahlaki sorunlardan azade değildir. Örneğin, yapay zekâ sistemleri ile dijital verilerimiz kullanılarak kararlarımızı etkileyebilecek manipülasyonlara her an maruz kalabilmekteyiz. Çin gibi ülkelerde yüz tanıma teknolojilerinin sosyal kontrol ve insanları ‘damgalama’ amaçlı kullanıldığı bilinmektedir. Veya sürücüsüz (otonom) araçlar konusunda yaşamı tehdit edebilecek etik ikilemlere henüz net bir cevap bulunabilmiş değildir. -/- Bütün bu sorunlardan hareketle, Türkçe literatürde yapay zekâ etiği ile ilgili münferit çalışmalar mevcut olsa da, yapay zekânın etiğine disiplinlerarası bir bakışla, farklı perspektiflerden yaklaşan ve bir bütün olarak ele alan pek az eserin olması bizi bu konuda bir çalışma yapmaya yönlendirmiştir. Elinizdeki kitap ile siz değerli okuyucularımıza bizleri ve yaşamlarımızı dönüştürmekte olan yapay zekâ teknolojilerinin etik boyutu hakkında birlikte düşünmeyi ve geleceğin tasarlanmasında söz sahibi olabilmek için de bu konudaki tartışmalarda aktif bir şekilde yer almayı teklif ediyoruz. (shrink)

This study aims to provide a coherent new interpretation of the notorious anti-hedonism of Speusippus, Plato’s nephew and the second scholarch of the Academy, by reconsidering all the relevant sources concerning his attitude toward pleasure—sources that seem to be in tension or even incompatible with each other. By reassessing Speusippus’ anti-hedonism and Aristotle’s response, it also sheds new light on the Academic debate over pleasure in which he and Aristotle participated: This debate is not merely concerned with the truth and (...) credibility of the arguments for or against hedonism; there are also notable differences among the participants in their understanding of the practical significance of evaluating hedonic experiences. This new interpretation allows us to better understand Aristotle’s selective representation of the intra-school debate and some neglected features of his responses to different interlocutors. (shrink)

A rich literature has discussed what it is to respond to a reason, e.g., to believe or act on the basis of some consideration or another. In comparison, what it would be to respond to a second-order reason has been underexplored. Yet formulating an account of this is vital for maintaining the existence of second-order reasons in both the practical and epistemic domains. And indeed, there are reasons to doubt this is possible. For example, responding to second-order reasons is meant (...) to be different from simply coming to believe or act for a more richly described first-order reason but it's not clear what this would look like. This paper introduces an account of the second-order basing relation which meets these concerns. It therefore both develops our picture of second-order reasons and helps to defend their existence. (shrink)

Some theories of goodness are descriptively rich: they have much to say about what makes things good. Neo-Aristotelian accounts, for instance, detail the various features that make a human being, a dog, a bee good relative to facts about those forms of life. Famously, such theories of relative goodness tend to be comparatively poor: they have little or nothing to say about what makes one kind of being better than another kind. Other theories of goodness—those that take there to be (...) absolute goodness—are comparatively rich: they offer grounds for judging some types of things better than others because they have more absolute goodness. Moorean accounts, for example, can tell us that humans and human experiences are superior to bees and blades of grass. But such theories tend to be descriptively poor: they struggle to tell us in virtue of what this is so. In this essay we motivate and flesh out a view that splits the difference between accounts of goodness as relative and accounts of goodness as absolute. Such a view holds promise only if the mechanics of this kind of metaphysics of goodness can be worked out. Here we present a view on which the paradigm for absolute goodness is God and the paradigm for each kind of relative goodness is a divine idea. (shrink)

Critics of Divine Command Theory (DCT) argue that DCT implies the following counterpossible is true: If God commanded us to perform a terrible act, then the terrible act would be morally obligatory. However, our intuitions tell us that such a counterpossible is false. Therefore, DCT fails. This is the counterpossible terrible commands objection. In this paper, I argue that the counterpossible terrible commands objection fails. I start by considering a standard response by DCT proponents that appeals to vacuism—the view that (...) all counterpossibles are vacuously true. I argue that DCT proponents should pursue a different response instead. I then go on to provide a new response to the counterpossible terrible commands objection: I argue that we lack reason to think that the counterpossible in question is false by examining the underlying intuitions. (shrink)

By integrating Bernard Williams’s internalism about reasons with his later thought, this article casts fresh light on internalism and reveals what wider concerns it speaks to. To be consistent with Williams’s later work, I argue, internalism must align with his deference to the phenomenology of moral deliberation and with his critique of ‘moral self-indulgence’. Key to this alignment is the idea that deliberation can express the agent’s motivations without referring to them; and that internalism is not a normative claim, but (...) an example of sense-making from ‘the ethnographic stance’. This leaves a worry over whether moral conviction can coexist with an internalist understanding of reasons. Here too, however, Williams’s later thought provides an answer. Differentiating corrosive from corroborative sense-making, it elucidates how internalism, though not normative, can nonetheless affect our confidence in reason statements, thereby informing how we deliberate and how we address those whose motivations differ from our own. (shrink)

The field of AI safety aims to prevent increasingly capable artificially intelligent systems from causing humans harm. Research on moral alignment is widely thought to offer a promising safety strategy: if we can equip AI systems with appropriate ethical rules, according to this line of thought, they'll be unlikely to disempower, destroy or otherwise seriously harm us. Deontological morality looks like a particularly attractive candidate for an alignment target, given its popularity, relative technical tractability and commitment to harm-avoidance principles. I (...) argue that the connection between moral alignment and safe behavior is more tenuous than many have hoped. In general, AI systems can possess either of these properties in the absence of the other, and we should favor safety when the two conflict. In particular, advanced AI systems governed by standard versions of deontology need not be especially safe. (shrink)

Coercion is morally objectionable: it’s bad to be coerced and it’s wrong to coerce people. But why is coercion objectionable? In this paper, I advance an egalitarian account of what’s objectionable about coercion. The account is rooted in the idea that certain relationships, like those of master to slave and lord to peasant, are relationships of subordination or domination. These relationships are morally objectionable. Moreover, such relationships are in part constituted by asymmetries of power. A master subordinates a slave because (...) the master has more power over the slave than vice versa. The account says that coercion is objectionable because it creates such asymmetries of power, and so creates relationships of subordination. I show how this account can address its most serious problems, and how it can illuminate what’s wrong with blackmail, exploitation, withholding aid, and compulsion. (shrink)

Is it good for us if the different parts of our lives are connected to each other like the parts of a good story? Some philosophers have thought so, while others have firmly rejected it. In this paper, I focus on the state-of-the-art anti-narrativist arguments Amy Berg has recently presented. I argue that while she makes a good case that the best lives for us do not revolve around a single project or theme, the best kind of narrativist views actually (...) encourage us to pursue a variety of different projects, as long as they are mutually supportive. When interpreted in the most plausible way, prudentially good-making narrative coherence arises precisely out of this kind of unity in diversity. Well-roundedness and narrative coherence are thus not inherently in tension, but are both good-making holistic features of lives. (shrink)

The suppression thesis is the theological claim that theistic non-belief results from culpable mistreatment of one’s knowledge of God or one’s evidence for God. The thesis is a traditional one but unpopular today. This article examines whether it can gain new credibility from the philosophy of self-deception and from the cognitive science of religion. The thesis is analysed in terms of the intentionalist and the non-intentionalist model of self-deception. The first proposed model views non-belief as intentional suppression of one’s implicit (...) knowledge of God. It is less feasible psychologically but has a good theological fit with Paul’s and Calvin’s versions of the thesis. This model also helps the argument for the culpability of non-belief. The second model views suppression as a process of subconscious motivated reasoning driven by a desire to avoid an uncomfortable truth. It fits Pascal’s view that one’s desire for or against God determines whether one sees general revelation as providing sufficient evidence for God. There is some empirical and anecdotal evidence for both models, but obvious cases of non-resistant non-belief present a major problem for the suppression thesis. Also, it is hard to see what might motivate anyone to deceive oneself about God’s existence. (shrink)

A handful of scholars have connected objectification (treating people like objects) to personification (treating objects like people). The recurring idea is that personification may entail objectification and therefore share in the latter's ethical difficulties. This idea is defended by various feminist philosophers. They focus on how the connection manifests in the male, heterosexual consumption of pornography, grounding a constitutive ethical criticism of this pornography. In this paper, I schematize the only two arguments for this connection, showing why each fails. I (...) revise one of the arguments to overcome my objection before showing, most significantly, that any argument with the same form must fail. I conclude by suggesting that thinking about the ethics of the imagination offers a promising alternative approach that preserves the spirit of these failed arguments. (shrink)

Feminist Ethics provides an overview of feminist contributions to normative ethics, moral psychology, and metaethics. It argues that through their criticisms of traditional ethics and proposals for changes, feminists are advancing 'robust agency,' an account of ideal moral and rational agency that promises to give us better responses than those given in traditional ethics to problems in ethics, including how we know our duties, the kind of persons we should strive to become, and why we should act morally.

This Element explains Kant's distinction between rational sympathy and natural sympathy. Rational sympathy is regulated by practical reason and is necessary for adopting as our own those ends of others which are contingent from the perspective of practical rationality. Natural sympathy is passive and can prompt affect and dispose us to act wrongly. Sympathy is a function of a posteriori productive imagination. In rational sympathy, we freely use the imagination to step into others' first-person perspectives and associate imagined intuitional contents (...) with the concepts others use to communicate their feelings. This prompts feelings in us that are like their feelings. (shrink)

The desire-satisfactionist defense of the existence of posthumous harm faces the problem of changing desires. The problem is that, in some cases where desires change before the time of their objects, the principle underlying the desire-satisfactionist defense of posthumous harm yields implausible results. In his prominent desire-satisfactionist defense of posthumous harm, David Boonin proposes a solution to this problem. First, I argue that there are two relevantly different versions of the problem of changing desires, and that Boonin's proposed solution addresses (...) only one of them. Second, I argue that modifying the underlying principle is a better approach to overcoming the problem of changing desires since it addresses both versions of the problem. I defend this approach against objections by showing that the problems raised are problems for the principle as a general theory of harm, not for the principle as part of the desire-satisfactionist defense of posthumous harm. (shrink)

There is a previously unrecognized coupling which underlies the Western evaluation of aesthetic experiences. By and large, we are taught that for our aesthetic pleasures to have any “value” (i.e. to be good) they must do more than merely entertain, distract, or delight. Instead, they should confront us with some “truth” about the nature of our existence and/or guide us to some “reality” concerning the state of our world. This paper asks: 1) whence this prejudice concerning the value of our (...) aesthetic experiences? 2) What metaphysical and ethical assumptions underlie this epistemological standard? And, finally, 3) how might our expectations concerning the nature and value of aesthetic experiences alter if these assumptions are called into question, as they are, for example, by contemporary metaphysical pessimism? This paper uses the concept of “guilty pleasures” as a site to expose the history of our Western assumptions concerning the evaluation of aesthetic experiences and to explore how a pessimistic revaluation of reality might change our analysis of what comprises “good” art. To this end, this paper traces the origins of our aesthetic assumptions in the West, shows how these assumptions continue to influence our aesthetic expectations today, exposes the hidden metaphysical premises, which underly those expectations, and explores why and how we might call these premises into question through a pessimistic revaluation of existence. All of these supports, in the end, a critical reassessment of the status and value our so-called “guilty pleasures.”. (shrink)

This article proposes a reading of Sophie de Grouchy’s moral, political, and economic thought as embedded in the tradition of natural jurisprudence, adapted to the context of the French First Republic. A close reading of her French translation of Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiment and her eight Letters on Sympathy confirms that there are points to be made by reading her works in the context of the language of early modern natural law. This sheds light on the important question (...) of how to read revolutionary republicanism emanating from multiple traditions other than the neo-Roman discourse of non-domination. (shrink)

In the attempt to get an insight into how “happiness” is conceptualized in Chinese tradition, this case study adopts tools of cognitive linguistics and poetics and investigates ci (詞) poetry of Yan Shu 晏殊 (991–1055), a successful politician and artist who is one of the most representative poets of the genre from the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127), a relatively peaceful and abundant era in Chinese history, known for its hedonistic psychology. From his remaining 139 poems, the study selected 13 of (...) the poems that explicitly express a happy state of mind or some positive emotions, and through analysis of the traditional images (yixiang 意象) in these poems attempts to extract the conceptual metaphors regarding “happiness” the poet lived by and the scenarios underlying the metaphors. The results reveal some cultural conceptual patterns in sync with the era in question but also some personal characteristics of the poet. (shrink)

Die Abschaffung der Sklaverei, die Einführung sozialer Sicherungssysteme, die Sanktionierung von Vergewaltigung in der Ehe gelten gemeinhin als gesellschaftlicher Fortschritt – als ein Wandel zum Besseren. Dennoch hat die Idee einer generellen Fortschrittsbewegung ihren alten Glanz verloren, ja, sie ruft sogar Skepsis hervor. In aller Munde ist hingegen die Diagnose der Regression. Sie wird diversen Zeiterscheinungen gestellt, vom rechtsautoritären Populismus bis zur Demokratiemüdigkeit. -/- Rahel Jaeggi verteidigt in ihrem Buch das Begriffspaar Fortschritt und Regression als unverzichtbares sozialphilosophisches Werkzeug für die (...) Kritik unserer Zeit. Als fortschrittlich oder regressiv versteht sie nicht nur das Resultat, sondern vor allem die Gestalt gesellschaftlicher Transformationen selbst. Indem sie nach den Erfahrungsblockaden fragt, die regressiven Tendenzen Vorschub leisten, entwickelt sie einen Begriff des Fortschritts, der eurozentrische Verzerrungen ebenso vermeidet wie die Vorstellung einer zwangsläufigen Entwicklungstendenz. Fortschritt, so zeigt sie, ist nicht der Vorlauf zu einem bereits bekannten Ziel, sondern der nie abgeschlossene Prozess der Emanzipation. (shrink)

This text collects Melaine Klein's writings from 1946 until her death in 1960, including two papers published posthumously. This was her last major work which introduces her theory of primary envy.

The present paper considers controversial utterances that were erroneously taken as derogatory. These examples are puzzling because, despite the audiences’ error, many speakers retract and even apologise for what they didn’t say and didn’t do. In recent years, intuitions about retractions have been used to test semantic theories. The cases discussed here test the predictive power of theories of derogatory language and help us better understand what is required to retract a slur. The paper seeks to answer three questions: are (...) the cases considered genuine retractions? If the speakers didn’t derogate by using a slur, how are the cases retractions of derogatory acts? Do these examples support expressive accounts of slurs? I argue that the examples provide evidence for an expressivist account of slurs: a slurring utterance (defeasibly) makes a derogatory speech act where the speaker expresses a commitment to a morally questionable appraisal state, such as disgust or contempt for a target group. A retraction of a derogatory speech act requires undoing the enactment of that commitment, which can be achieved with a genuine apology. This helps explain the conduct of audiences who misunderstand what the speaker says, and the speakers’ reactions. -/- . (shrink)

Many of us think human extinction would be a very bad thing, and that we have moral reasons to prevent it. But there is disagreement over what would make extinction so bad, and thus over what grounds these moral reasons. Recently, several theorists have argued that our reasons to prevent extinction stem not just from the value of the welfare of future lives, but also from certain additional values relating to the existence of humanity itself (for example, humanity's “final” value, (...) or the value of humanity in itself). In this paper, I argue against these “additional value” views. Despite their initial appeal, these views will inevitably face conflicts between the additional values to which they appeal, and the value of the welfare of future lives. And, I argue, the views cannot plausibly resolve these conflicts. In contrast, these conflicts do not arise for a rival view, on which our reasons to prevent extinction stem just from the value of the welfare of future lives. I conclude that this gives us reason to prefer the latter view, despite the greater initial plausibility of additional value views. (shrink)

This paper examines a recent argument in favour of strong precautionary action—possibly including working to hasten human extinction—on the basis of a decision-theoretic view that accommodates the risk-attitudes of all affected while giving more weight to the more risk-averse attitudes. First, we dispute the need to take into account other people’s attitudes towards risk at all. Second we argue that a version of the non-identity problem undermines the case for doing so in the context of future people. Lastly, we suggest (...) that we should not work to hasten human extinction, even if significant risk aversion is warranted. (shrink)

Modern philosophy can often appear to be mere cryptomnesia, redressed and resuited to fit the particular mouth from which it is espoused. This notion is but a sorrowful chimera binding the 21st-century mind to the confines of an eternal shadow, an eternal prison of doubt in the face of limitless potential. As a species, we are rapidly approaching the precipice of Yahweh's original position as instantiators of consciousness, as the I AM in relation to our artificial progeny. Could one fabricate (...) a candidate more fitting for a contra-analysis of our current situation than Hegel? One could not. (shrink)

The early coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) outbreak inflicted vulnerability on individuals and societies on a completely different scale than we have seen previously. The pandemic developed rapidly from 1 day to the next, and both society and individuals were put to the test. Older people's experiences of the early outbreak were no exception. Using an abductive analytical approach, the study explores the individual experiences of vulnerability as described by older people hospitalised with COVID–19 in the early outbreak. In these older (...) people, we found that the societal context and the individual experiences of vulnerability were inextricable linked. The study demonstrates that despite significant individual stress, informants displayed an interesting ability to also view their situation to reorient their perspective. The experience of vulnerability is both conditional and individual, which imposes a degree of unpredictability that neither they nor others were able to negotiate. The article discusses the phenomenon of unpredictability in light of a modern society with regard to how individuals and society may encounter unexpected events in the future where the potential to reorient will be vital. (shrink)